Excavators are required to notify underground facility owners in advance of their excavation activities and to describe and communicate the geographic area of those activities to the underground facility owners. As a result, excavators may submit a work order (i.e., locate request or ticket) to, for example, a one-call center, which serves as notification to underground facility owners. A locate request (or ticket) may be any communication or instruction to perform a locate operation at a certain dig area, which is any specified geographic area within which excavation may occur. One call centers may receive locate requests from excavators via electronic delivery or verbally through a telephone conversation between the excavator and a human call center operator. Whether communicated electronically or verbally, excavators must describe the planned geographic locations of dig areas. This description may be ultimately reduced to text, which, along with other data about a locate request, is communicated to the appropriate locate service provider.
Textual descriptions of dig areas can be very imprecise as to exact physical locations. In addition, addresses which are provided may be unclear, indicating only cross streets and vague descriptions of the extent of the dig area. Therefore, when a locate request is submitted by an excavator, it may be beneficial for the excavator to supplement the locate request with a visit to the site of the dig area for the purpose of delimiting and/or otherwise indicating the particular geographic location of the proposed excavation. For example, marks may be used to physically delimit a dig area. These marks may consist of chalk or paint that is applied to the surface of the ground, and are generally known as “white lines.” The delimited dig area indicates to a locate technician the extent of the boundaries where a locate operation is to be performed according to the locate request that was submitted by the excavator.
However, the use of these physical white lines to physically delimit the dig area may be limited. For example, these physical white lines provide only a temporary indication of the dig area, as the physical white lines may deteriorate or be eliminated over time by such events as precipitation, excessive pedestrian or vehicle traffic, erosion, the excavation process, or numerous other events. Therefore, a need exists for improved ways of delimiting and/or otherwise indicating the proposed excavation site in a more permanent and/or reproducible manner.
Further, certain excavation projects may be suitably large to require that locate operations be performed in multiple stages and/or phases over a period of time. In one example, an excavation project along several miles of a highway may be performed over several days, weeks, and/or months. In another example, an excavation project of a large residential or commercial subdivision again may be performed over several days, weeks, and/or months. The request for locate operations with respect to a multiple-stage excavation project that spans a period of time may be submitted via multiple individual tickets. Alternatively, this request may be submitted under a single ticket, which is hereafter referred to as a “project ticket.” The locate operations with respect to multiple-stage excavation projects must be coordinated between excavators and locate personnel, such as locate technicians. For example, throughout the multiple stages of the excavation project, there may be communication between excavators and locate technicians about the location of the respective subsections of the overall dig area to be located and about the timing of the respective locate operations. Further, at each stage of the project, excavators may delimit and/or otherwise indicate the respective subsections of the overall dig area to be located using physical white lines.
Currently, with respect to multiple-stage excavation projects, the communication process between excavators and locate technicians may be poorly coordinated due to poor infrastructure and, therefore, the day-to-day activities of excavators and locate personnel may be poorly synchronized. As a result, there is a risk of locate operations occurring at the wrong subsections of the project dig area and/or at the wrong times. This leads to poor operating efficiencies and, perhaps, lost profit with respect to both excavation companies and locate companies. Furthermore, excavators may perform the planned excavation with a certain amount of uncertainty as to whether a certain locate operation of the project ticket is complete and with limited confidence that the certain locate operation of the project ticket has been performed satisfactorily. As a result, there is a certain amount of risk of damage to underground facilities.
Consequently, a need exists for improved synchronization between excavators and locate personnel with respect to multiple-stage excavation projects in order to better coordinate the day-to-day activities, thereby improving operating efficiency. Further, a need exists for improved communication mechanisms between excavators and locate personnel with respect to project tickets in order to improve efficiency; reduce uncertainty and, thereby, reduce the risk of damage to underground facilities; and improve information exchange for making better and more timely decisions with respect to allocating resources.